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Government delegations from 17 EU member states, known as the “Friends of Cohesion”, are meeting in Prague on Tuesday to discuss a united position on the EU’s budget for 2021–2027. They have issued a joint declaration which states that the future EU budget should include the same level of cohesion funding, but states should be given more flexibility in how they use it.

Josefov Meadows, a bird reserve in east Bohemia, is one of the winners of the first Adapterra Awards, presented by the Czech environmental foundation Partnership on Monday. The competition awarded altogether five projects for their contribution to fighting climate change, including a house with a marsh plant roof and an environmentally friendly canoe and kayak factory.

Underpaid and swarmed with paperwork, headmasters at Czech schools do not have it easy. At least according to a new study published by CERGE-EI, the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. It found that directors of Czech schools have the highest administrative burden compared to their counterparts in other EU countries. Partly a result of excessive decentralisation, the study claims.

Due to a strike many Czech schools are set to close on Wednesday, while others will have limited service. Teachers unions have called the one-day walkout after a breakdown in pay talks, though government officials argue that salaries are increasing significantly.

Czech children are more active than their peers in other parts of the world when it comes to spending their free time, suggests an international study carried out by experts from the Palacký University in Olomouc. According to the survey, nearly 90 percent of Czech kids attend some after-school classes. However, an increasing number of them also spend time at their computers.

Thanks to a unique sound recording acquired by Czech Radio, the state attorney’s office has ordered a new investigation into the death of foreign minister Jan Masaryk, son of the country’s first president T.G. Masaryk, in February 1948. His great niece Charlotta Kotik has welcomed the news and is hoping to help the investigation.

Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, the Ministry of Culture will designate seven sites as ‘national cultural monuments’. All of them are tied to the Czech nation’s struggle to secure freedom or rid itself of Nazi or Soviet oppression. Among them is the Czech Radio building in Prague, a focal point of resistance both in 1968 and at the close of WWII.

The Romany singer Ida Kelarová and her Chavorenge Children’s Choir together with musicians from the Czech Philharmonic will perform a concert at the Phoenix Concert Hall in Croydon, southern England on Thursday evening. The program will feature the international Romany anthem Gelem, Gelem, and the choir’s best known song Hey Romale!

Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, an eclectic group of musicians based in the United States has recorded a special album of songs written by Czech songwriters Karel Kryl and Jaromír Nohavica. Called ‘Steel Strings and Iron Curtains – Songs that Ignited the Downfall of Communism’, it features a number of subversive tunes never before recorded in English.

As the Czech nation celebrates 30 years of freedom and democracy the words of a leading Communist Party official have caused a public outcry. In an interview for Czech Radio, the party’s deputy chair, Stanislav Grospič argued that the 1968 Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia was not an invasion and that the people killed had died mostly in road accidents. While his words evoked widespread condemnation, the Communist Party has not distanced itself from the statement.